Hosting

Atlas_IRL

Hi guys hope i'm in the right section.

I am currently about to get a new Ecommerce site built by a very reputable award winning company in the UK. I've no doubts they will do a very good job however the site will be hosted by them (only 20 pounds a month) This is so they can add updates, support etc. Will this be worse for my seo, as we sell throughout Ireland and Ireland would be 90% of our sales and market? Its a .com retail site we have the .ie as well.

Is it much of an issue? The site in general will be much better optimized than the current one. We host our current one ourselves but do not have any support if anything goes wrong. (Gypo developers)

blue4ever

Preference would be for a Irish IP (if 90%).

All you need to do is give your developers FTP access to a hosting account here and they can do any maintenance etc.

If it has to be hosted in the UK then I would set up a webmaster tools a/c (if you don''t already) and make sure that the preferred location setting is Ireland. If your are not using a geo specific TLD (like .ie or .co.uk etc) then the server location will play a part.

If you have a physical address here in IRE, get that on a few pages as well if possible.

Atlas_IRL wrote: »

Hi guys hope i'm in the right section.

I am currently about to get a new Ecommerce site built by a very reputable award winning company in the UK. I've no doubts they will do a very good job however the site will be hosted by them (only 20 pounds a month) This is so they can add updates, support etc. Will this be worse for my seo, as we sell throughout Ireland and Ireland would be 90% of our sales and market? Its a .com retail site we have the .ie as well.

Is it much of an issue? The site in general will be much better optimized than the current one. We host our current one ourselves but do not have any support if anything goes wrong. (Gypo developers)

VMotion

It is usually a good idea, to make sure that your domains are registered in your name and it is better not to have your hosting with the design guys.
If you ever decide to divorce them, there could be complications because they control all of your data. At the end of the day to make changes to your site they need FTP access only and you can provide it to them without any issues. You will then have all the control of your data and you can change ftp password anytime and revoke their access.
The IP would be the first checkpoint for search engines and it could help you with targeting your market. But as the previous poster said, you can be ok with setting your GEO preferences in google webmaster tools.

Atlas_IRL

Cheers for the answers. They have their own ecommerce software platform which i say is why they do the hosting themselves. Similar to buy4now i suppose. That's a good tip with the webmaster tools i was unaware of that one.

It is usually a good idea, to make sure that your domains are registered in your name and it is better not to have your hosting with the design guys.
If you ever decide to divorce them, there could be complications because they control all of your data. At the end of the day to make changes to your site they need FTP access only and you can provide it to them without any issues. You will then have all the control of your data and you can change ftp password anytime and revoke their access.

Yes i have my current hosting with blacknight and would like to keep it that way but im not sure yet if i can. It can be a nightmare being locked down to a developer. If its their platform and everyone is hosted on that im not too sure if i can ask to host it. I will try that when i am in advanced discussions with them.

VMotion

Atlas_IRL, will you mind sharing their URL (PM?) Might be able to give some further advice on the platform they are using.

Best of luck!

Atlas_IRL

Yeah ill send it too you now (didn't want to give it out in public as they would get an alert to it.)

MrPicante

Depending on the server and the speed of the server you will have no problems hosting the site where ever you want. I have tested Ireland V. US and UK and once it's a powerful enough package there is yet no difference. However, this will depend on traffic numbers and transactios etc

mneylon

It sounds like a proprietary solution.
Just make sure you read the fine print in any agreement that they're asking you to sign

Atlas_IRL

Blacknight wrote: »

It sounds like a proprietary solution.
Just make sure you read the fine print in any agreement that they're asking you to sign

Actually you are probably correct there, i doubt i would have access to internal coding as it would contain the code for their software. Ill bring all this up for sure, thanks.